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Conan the Adventurer Cartoon Series?!

While on Amazon today, I noticed in my section "Coming Soon for You", a DVD collection called "Conan the Adventurer: Season 2, Part 1."  I clicked over and saw that apparently there was a Conan cartoon produced by Sunbow (the same animation company that produced Transformers and G.I. Joe), starting in 1992.  Apparently there are a total of 51 episodes, and yet I've never even heard of this before!

The description, unsurprisingly, doesn't look like it bears all that much resemblance to Howard's creation, other than the names.  Conan supposedly rides a horse named Thunder and adventures with Jezmine, Snagg, Needle, Greywolf and Zula on a "quest to rescue Conan’s family from an evil spell cast by the Serpent Man wizard Wrath-Amon."  He's also armed with a sword forged from "star-metal."

Since I didn't grow up with this one, like I did with Thundarr, I don't think the nostalgia factor is going to win out and cause me to get this.  But, I am still a little intrigued.  I wouldn't mind checking it out via Netflix streaming or something like that.

Anybody else out there hear of this?  I'm shocked that in all the time I've spent reading OSR blogs and the absolute love for all things Conan that many bloggers rave about, somehow I've never seen anybody talking about this.
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Comments

  1. Anthony SimeoneNovember 15, 2011 at 11:59 AM

    Hey Martin! Yeah, I remember watching this around the time it was out. I was in high school at the time (10th grade). It was ok, sort of corny. I knew dimly of the fact that Conan was based on some old stories, originally. But my only contact with Conan before this cartoon was the Arnie movies. So don't feel bad if you don't pick this up. It's pretty meh, IMHO.

    Just as a point of reference, I probably had more exposure to this and He-Man rather than Thundarr.

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  2. thekelvingreenNovember 15, 2011 at 12:16 PM

    I remember this well. It wasn't very good, which may be why it's not mentioned much. It's the poor man's He-Man really.

    Here are the opening credits for your "pleasure".

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  3. Tim KnightNovember 15, 2011 at 1:24 PM

    I've got season one of DVD, only watched a few episodes though. It's very dumbed-down and kiddified (there's a 'cute' baby phoenix comedy-sidekick living in Conan's shield or something). His quest is to bring down Wrath-Amon who turned his family to stone (and get them changed back). It's all to do with the star-metal - which can shatter the snake-men's illusionary form and send them back to the dimension from whence they came.

    If I remember correctly ol' W-A plays to build a network of pyramids around Hyboria with star-metal "stargates" on top to summon Set to the world. Something like that, anyway...

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  4. Martin R. ThomasNovember 15, 2011 at 4:06 PM

    Wow - I should've known that somebody that reads my blog would've watched this!

    Those opening credits are, um... well. Interesting. Haha.

    Thanks for the comments, gents.

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  5. Tim SniderNovember 15, 2011 at 4:29 PM

    Watched the series back in the day. Not bad. Yes, there's a funny animal sidekick that surfaces on occasion, but the series tried to touch on some of Howard's tropes. Evil serpent men led by a bad wizard, etc. And the thing I liked most was that the series actually ENDED. Throughout the series, Conan got closer to stopping Wrath-amon while W-A got those pyramids built and brought Set to Earth. Did Conan stop the invasion and bring his family back to life? Was W-A ultimately defeated? Last episode brought the series to an end, which was appreciated rather than the never-resolved cliffhangers of other shows.

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  6. Martin R. ThomasNovember 15, 2011 at 5:45 PM

    @Sniderman - having a series with a story-arc that actually has an ending is pretty rare, indeed. I wish more shows did that, although I suspect it just all comes down to them getting canceled before they are ready to play out their storylines.

    I started to like the idea of the season-long arcs, similar to what was done with the "Justice League" and "Justice League Unlimited" series. Over time, each season became an arc, so if the series got canceled, at least there was some kind of ending.

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  7. ChrisOctober 23, 2021 at 11:08 AM

    I love this! One of my favorites. Very good story writing especially for it’s time. The voice actors over act and yell a lot, but if you look past that it has a great story. For the first season, each episode moves the plot along, meeting new characters, new weapons, mystical monsters, magical artifacts, diverse kingdoms, and mysterious histories to uncover. There is a lot to like. The main villain comes closer and closer to his main objective, and Conan and his friends never lose sight of their goals. The ideas in this series have never left me and the Series finale is one of the best of the decade - quite epic, closes a lot of loops, and is very satisfying.

    You can watch it for free on Tubi right now!
    https://tubitv.com/series/6

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    Replies
    1. Martin R. ThomasNovember 15, 2021 at 6:04 PM

      Thank you so much for the info, Chris, and apologies for being so late on replying to you. Cheers!

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  8. ChrisOctober 23, 2021 at 11:10 AM

    I would love to see a modern take on this series

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